By Rev. A. C. Dixon, D.D., Pastor Metropolitan Tabernacle Church, London, England.
When our Lord said, “Search the Scriptures,” every Jew to whom He spoke knew what He meant. There were other writings in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, but the Scriptures were a body of writings marked off from all others by their sacredness and authority as the Word of God. Their history can be traced from the time of Moses to Christ. In Exodus 17:14 we read: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua.” As to the writing material Moses used we do not know, but we do know that in Egypt papyrus plant, linen and cotton cloth, the skins of animals and stone were used in making books of various kinds. The Ten Commandments were written on tables of stone, and with Egyptian mummies we have preserved even to this day cotton and linen cloth such as was frequently used for writing.
In Deuteronomy 31:9 we have the historic record of the fact that Moses obeyed the command of God: “And Moses wrote this law and delivered it unto the priests, the sons of Levi, which bare the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord.” And in verse 24: “It came to pass when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites which bare the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, saying, Take this book of the law and put it in the side of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God.” The book was finished and placed by the side of the Ark for safe keeping.
In Joshua 1:8 we read: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” Now that the pillar of fire by night and of cloud by day has departed, the Book is to be the guide of Israel and their religion is to be to a large extent a book religion. God is speaking to them out of the “Book of the Law.”
It is probable that the book which Joshua read was the identical manuscript which Moses wrote in the wilderness. There may have been copies made of it, but we have no record of the fact. Frequent mention of it is made through the books of the Bible. The same book, or a copy of it, appears again a thousand years afterward under the reign of Josiah, as we learn from 2 Kings 22:8: “And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan and he read it.”
In Ezra we find it again in the hands of the prophet on the pulpit of wood in the open air, reading it and making its meaning plain unto the people. From these and other Scriptures three inferences may be fairly drawn:
The Bible is literature written by the command of God. He certainly commanded Moses to write the book of the law. To John on the Isle of Patmos a great voice as of a trumpet said, “What thou seest write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches.” And before the vision vanishes he is commanded to “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.” He is to write history, current events and predictions; and much of the “the Scriptures” may be classified under these three heads.
The Bible is literature written by the command of God, and under the guidance of God. In Peter 1:21 we read: “No prophecy ever came by the will of man, but man spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.”
The Bible is literature written by the command of God, under the guidance of God, and preserved by the providential care of God. Moses commanded that the book of the law should be placed by the side of the Ark. No safer place could have been found, and the more I study the history of the Bible the more profoundly am I convinced that God has kept His book by the side of some ark all through the ages. As the Church has been under His care and protection, so has the Book.
It is not difficult for me to believe that the manuscript which Hilkiah found in the Temple was the identical book which Moses wrote in the wilderness, and that this very manuscript was in the hands of Ezra on the pulpit of wood as he preached in the open air. It is only one thousand years from Joshua to Josiah and only one hundred and seventy-five years from Josiah to Ezra. There are now in our libraries scores of manuscripts which we know to be over a thousand years old, and two or three which have certainly been preserved more than fourteen hundred years. With the kindly oriental climate and the care which the Jewish reverence for the book would naturally lead them to have, it is not at all improbable that the manuscript of Moses should have been preserved for more than a thousand years. And the history of the Bible from the time of Christ to the present confirms the proposition that it has been preserved by the providential care of God.
Let us now look at “the Scriptures” in their own light. In John 5:39 Jesus said: “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me.” And in 2 Timothy 3:16 we read, “All Scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” In these Scriptures are four things: